Lou, the one who turns transitions into opportunities

Attentive, authentic, enthusiastic: three words that sum up Lou rather well. A certified coach, academic and career counsellor and Country Manager for Switzerland at Axiom Academic, she has spent the past several years helping young people and adults get to know themselves better, so they can turn every transition (personal, academic or professional) into an opportunity.

Expatriation, the starting point of a new path

Expatriation is what changed everything. When she left her home country, Lou had to reinvent herself professionally. Unable to practise her former profession because of the language and the local context, she chose to support those who, like her, were looking to give new meaning to their journey.

“Walking alongside people as they think their way towards their own path to success became self-evident,” she explains.

What she loves above all is the click, that inner spark she watches come to life in the people she supports. “It works like a spring, and it becomes an incredible lever of motivation.”

Her approach rests on an essential distinction: supporting is not advising. “Supporting someone means being at their side on their journey, helping them move towards what they want, at their own pace, while helping them discover their own resources. Advising means telling them what to do. I prefer the first posture.”

We are part of a vast, complex system, and we are the fruit of the many cultures woven into our life paths.

Lou DUMONT SAINT PRIEST, Country Manager ZURICH

Fifteen years abroad, and just as many life lessons

After more than fifteen years living abroad, Lou has come away with one conviction: you can have several professional lives and find your place anywhere in the world.

This way of life has taught her humility and curiosity. “We are part of a vast, complex system, and we are the fruit of the many cultures woven into our life paths.”

She likes to remind families who have just arrived in Switzerland that the country, despite the French language, has its own culture and its own codes:

“Careful, the French language is a decoy! You are in another country, with its own culture, and that is precisely what makes it so delightful to discover.”

From this life in motion, she has also kept a familiar feeling: that of never belonging to just one place, but to several at once.

At Axiom Academic, a builder of trust

Within Axiom Academic, Lou acts as a caring interface between families, students and teachers.

She describes her role as a link between “four worlds”: an international company on a human scale, parents in search of solutions, young people to support, and tutors committed to one shared goal: their students’ success.

Alongside this, her experience as an independent academic and career counsellor allows her to help young people understand themselves better and build a path that truly fits them. From the end of middle school, she invites them to reflect on their strengths, their aspirations and their values, so they can become the driving force behind their own future.

What does she enjoy most? Watching the atmosphere ease within families as trust returns. “When a thread starts to unwind for the young people, everyone breathes easier. It’s lovely.”

Between mountains, silence and books

When she is not working, Lou recharges in nature. A lover of the mountains, she makes the most of wide open spaces to find calm and silence again. “Beautiful landscapes, with real depth to them, restore me deeply.”

An avid reader, she devours books of every kind: novels, crime fiction, classics and personal development essays. “I read according to my mood or my energy level: sometimes easy novels, sometimes more demanding reads.”

And every morning begins with an unchanging ritual: a coffee, savoured in silence, once the family rush is over.

💌 Would you like to talk with Lou?

Based in Zurich, Lou supports expat families with their educational needs and matches students with the best-suited private tutors through Axiom Academic.

If you would like to tell her about your educational project, you can contact her directly:

• By e-mail: lou.dsp@axiom-academic.fr
• By WhatsApp: Click here!
• Through our website: contact page

She will be delighted to reply and point you towards the solution that suits you best.